Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi died last week. A delusional meglomaniac, he ruled Libya for over 30 years by savagely repressing dissent and committing atrocities. He was also a known sponsor of international terrorism. No one will miss him.

Emboldened by the mostly non-violent regime change of the Arab Spring, anti-Gaddafi rebels took up arms, supported by NATO air strikes. America and its allies had briefly flirted with normalizing relations with Libya—fatalistically, because for decades no one had managed to dislodge Gaddafi, and by the way, Libya has tons of oil—but when they saw a chance to help get rid of him once and for all, they sided with the rebels. Some of Gaddafi’s family received asylum elsewhere, but he and his sons were determined to fight to the death. It all ended very, very badly for Gaddafi this week, when he was pulled from the drainage ditch in his hometown of Surt, beaten and abused for an enthusiastic mob, and finally executed with a shot to the head. His dead body, and that of his son Muatassim, were put on public display in a meat locker for days until they were buried in secret.

The fact that Gaddafi was captured alive but then shot has caused some hand-wringing. The New York Times wrote:

Responding to international pressure, the interim government has said it would investigate his death, since the killing of captives is considered a war crime. But there is virtually no appetite in Libya for prosecuting the killers of Colonel Qaddafi, whose violent death ended one of the most brutal dictatorships in the Arab world.

How the rebel-backed government will function, or if they even can, is unknown. But the way Western officials are concern-trolling about how something went wrong is ridiculous…and hypocritical. The international community provided those rebels significant aid in the form of arms and air strikes. They obviously weren’t opposed to violence—they just wanted it to be the right kind of violence (Not mob violence! So icky!). Unfortunately, once you set violence in motion, it’s extremely difficult to control, particularly when the people you’re enabling are desperate and enraged.

The truth is, violence is inevitable, and not always a bad thing for an oppressed people. Non-violent resistance doesn’t always work, and it certainly wasn’t going to topple Gaddafi. Non-violent movements succeed only if the powerful are willing to step down or compromise, which was never going to happen in Libya—or Romania or the Dominican Republic or any number of other nations whose strongmen truly left the citizens no option other than assassination. Some people may be squeamish about that reality, but I’m not one of them.

Those of us in peaceful Western nations like to hold up our ideal of an orderly, impartial trial followed by humane imprisonment as a model for the rest of the world—but those things are simply not possible in many places. Some states are so violent and insecure that it’s impossible to maintain the kind of order required for a clean arrest, trial, and punishment, even if they had the judicial infrastructure to carry out such a trial. Many simply don’t have the cultural or legal tradtion of impartially judged trials that Westerners take for granted. In places where strongmen do wind up on trial, it’s either because they surrendered, like Hosni Mubarak, who simply couldn’t bring himself to order the massacre of his own countrymen as Gaddafi did, or because, as with Saddam Hussein, an outside force like the US military imposed enough order that he could be safely arrested and imprisoned.

I suppose that theoretically the United Nations could be empowered to capture and try despotic heads of state. I’ve heard pundits and politicians propose that as a solution, but that just smells like good old-fashioned imperialism. To be honest, Western nations—especially the US—don’t have the best record of judging which despots should stay and which go (we were all too happy to prop up Saddam Hussein, for example, and we unapologetically put Mobutu in power). The ethics of such enforcement would also be undermined by the fact that Western nations frequently betray their stated humanitarian values by using extra-legal means—like renditions and torture—in order to get hold of war criminals so they can be brought to trial. In some cases, as in the former Yugoslavia, the people and leaders of a nation might ask the UN to oversee the trial of someone they capture themselves, and that seems reasonable. But that was not going to happen with Gaddafi. Some in the West might not have liked that the rebels gave him a bullet to the head instead of a fair trial, but there haven’t been fair and impartial trials in Libya for most of its history, and let’s face it, Gaddafi’s wasn’t going to be the first.

There have been some lamentations after Gaddafi’s death—the usual arguments that violence shouldn’t beget more violence and an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. I don’t buy it. That brand of pacifism is usually spouted by privileged Westerners who’ve never lived under the boot of violent oppression. Those who have know that non-violence gets you exactly nowhere when pitted against the truly violent or fanatic or deranged. Libyans could have spent the next twenty years marching in the spirit of pacifism and understanding and it wouldn’t have done a damn thing except get them killed. Gaddafi had poisoned Libya with violence, fear, and injustice over decades, and then refused to get out while he still could. His end was inevitable, and entirely of his own making.

Pacifism, non-violent protest, and bloodless courtroom justice are worthy ideals, but they are not always possible. Nor are they the only way to achieve positive social change and bring down oppressors. Violence will do that too, and sometimes only violence will do it. That’s been the reality for all of human history and pretending that we’re evolved past it is simply naive.

21 Responses to “The Death of Gaddafi: Why Violence Is Still Necessary”

I’m not crying any tears for the guy, and I understand the appeal of (as well as the significant problems with) what I’ve heard termed “country justice.” But I’ve been talking about this with the Dude over the last couple of days, and it’s not so much that I’m above violence, but Gaddafi’s death, while no doubt horrible, seems insufficient somehow. I (white US American lady) wanted him to have a reckoning of his many crimes. I wanted the Libyan people to say “YOU DID THIS.” And this, and this, and this. I wanted him to have to face up to the extent of his cruelty. I wanted him to feel profound shame, if not remorse.

Or maybe he was just too delusional and would never feel guilt or shame, so an ignominious end is really better.

What do you think of the argument that Chris Hitchens made: that it would have been better to try him in the International Criminal Court? That argument seems reasonable to me. It would have been some reckoning for him and some relief for Libya, whether or not he felt any remorse.

@rodriguez: I think it’s a reasonable idea in theory, but that presumes that the rebels were going to capture Gaddafi alive and that if they did, they would put aside their own (entirely justified) rage and care for him in captivity long enough to turn him over to the UN or some outside authority. Chances of both those things happening were slim to none.

And frankly, for the UN (or whomever) to say to the Libyan people: “Hey, let us deal with him instead of you doing it” implies that outsiders are somehow more entitled to punish a brutal dictator or seek justice for a people than the actual people themselves. I don’t think that would sit well with Libyans and frankly, it doesn’t sit well with me either.

@rodriguez: I kind wonder why we keep that thing around, it’s such a kangaroo court. But then, I don’t think “fairness” is really the idea; it’s just supposed to accomplish different goals that require Very Bad People to be non-violently processed somehow. I suppose the ICC allows the international community to remove a strongman if the guy’s a crazy free radical whose very presence in his country’s justice system makes things more chaotic (like Saddam – remember all those death threats and goofy theatrics?) It can also be used as a political bargaining chip, like how Serbia recently gave up that bigwig general to the Hague for EU consideration. And last, I think it can serve as a symbolic starting point for the systematic application of a criminal justice system (guess this could apply to Gaddafi).

Silly old Muammar. All that money and he couldn’t build a decent drain pipe with a good hidey-hole.

“….To be honest, Western nations—especially the US—don’t have the best record of judging which despots should stay and which go (we were all too happy to prop up Saddam Hussein, for example, and we unapologetically put Mobutu in power)…..”

To be honest, Western nations – especially the USA – have an admirable record of judging which despots should stay and which should go – and when. It is all a matter of timing. You bed who you need to bed and you kill them when you need to kill them. You just have to make sure you do it in the right order.
Western governments are tasked with at least optimising, if not maximising, the welfare of those who put/keep them in power.
The average Western person sleeps soundly at night because their governments are willing to do nasty things to keep them comfortable. And these nasty things are hidden from the masses and comforting fictions are disseminated to ‘explain’ why what is happening is happening.
Would you want anything less from your government? Actually, would your average citizen, who is willing to do anything to alleviate the suffering of non-Westerners as long as he/she does not have to actually do anything to alleviate this suffering, want anything less from her/his government?

I know.
What differentiates the West from the rest is that in the West the ‘people’ think they put/keep their governments in power. The ‘people’ in the rest know who puts/keeps governments in power – and it ain’t the people.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and talking about this with my partner, who is from Iraq. He pointed out what a fiasco (and media circus) Saddam Hussein’s trial, and eventual execution were. The trial was also seriously flawed from a legal perspective.

I don’t get the impression that it left Iraqis feeling like they got justice (obviously, my partner doesn’t speak for all Iraqis, so I could be totally off base here). Confronted with the evidence of his crimes against humanity, Saddam….didn’t care, and I don’t think Gaddafi would have cared either. I don’t know if either Saddam or Gaddafi were delusional enough to believe that they were acting in the best interests of the Iraqi/Libyan people (although Gaddafi does give that impression). It they did believe that, then they were able to rationalize their horrible crimes. If not, they were willing to do anything to keep themselves in power, so not a lot of room for regret there, either.

@Debbie: Agreed. Evil/delusional people don’t see anything wrong with what they’ve done (and I think there’s a lot of evidence that Gaddafi was seriously mentally ill). If they had any conscience, they wouldn’t have committed those acts in the first place.

I think that ideally trials exist to put events and testimony on the record and provide some closure or sense of vindication for the victims as well as punish the guilty. The Nuremberg trials are probably the best example of this. But I don’t think those trials cause war criminals or despots to have an epiphany and suddenly become remorseful.

When you say this, I get the impression you have in mind an absolute definition of the concept of ‘conscience’ and therefore a prescription of what particular traits a ‘good’ conscience would possess.
This is like the Religionists and their concept of the ‘Natural Law’: “Is a concept/action good because the Religion says it is or is it a good concept/action because it is inherently/’naturally’ good and therefore the Religion just simply agrees?” For the record; the latter is the case for most religions.
And from where does this ‘Natural Law’ originate? Well from god(s) of course.

I agree that violence is sometimes necessary, but I don’t see any evidence that it was necessary to torture Gaddafi and drag his mutilated body through the streets.

Whether U.S. intervention in Libya was the right thing to do will depend on what kind of regime replaces Gaddafi. If we’ve helped replace a brutal dictator with another repressive regime, we’ve achieved nothing.

If the regime is going to become a democracy, it has to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the people at large. Torturing a vanquished leader to death isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of Gaddafi supporters or undecideds.

Someone followed up the killing of Gaddafi with a mass murder of 50-or-so Gaddafi loyalists outside a hotel. Many were found with their hands bound, according to Human Rights Watch.

It’s not like summary execution is some kind of universal Libyan ideal that we Americans don’t understand. Undisciplined troops all over the world get carried away and kill people they set out to capture. It’s a universal problem.

A Libyan military commander said that rebels’ initial goal was to take Gaddafi alive, but that the situation got out of hand: http://bit.ly/uKtSEP

@Becky – Moreover I’m not sure what people would expect to happen if he did show remorse. He still needed to die for the country to move forward and it seems to me that any show of remorse, no matter how (in)sincere, would have made that needlessly complex and difficult. The thought that it would have been acceptable for him to, e.g., be imprisoned instead seems to me to exhibit willful blindness towards human nature.

@Lindsay Beyerstein – Frankly, if I were Libyan, I don’t think I’d want the hearts and minds of Quaddafi supporters, I’d want to kick them out of my country.

I believe pacifism is always possible. I HAVE to believe that. I’m not going to get into a big hand-wringing thing, but it’s fair to say that when people say it’s not? When you say that pacifism is a great ideal but not always possible, that violence is sometimes necessary?

I feel personally attacked by it- I can feel the bottom of my gut disappear. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that a boot to the face is sometimes necessary, and I think that to believe violence is necessary is as naive as you said pacifism is.

I think violence performed with full knowledge of its consequences can make some good changes happen faster. I can, and I hate that I can, imagine situations in which I would be violent and feel justified in being so. But I don’t think striking someone else is ever a thing that will do anything other than damage us both, in different ways.

I believe that to say violence is sometimes absolutely necessary is more indicative of a privileged existence removed from actual physical violence than to say pacism is possible and desirable. It is a foul and horrible thing to strike someone, to be struck, for that to happen day in and day out. It poisons us. It makes us less than human.

Please do not call pacifists naive. It does not help. It has made me so, so angry. Peace cannot, will not, is never won by punching someone so hard they just lose the will to fight. That’s how fear of reprisal works. Not peace. No.

@MagpieSeven: So you don’t believe in violence as a means of self-defense? Because sometimes killing or violently resisting the people who attack and oppress you is the only way you will survive. I’m not a big believer in martyrdom, and there are times when martyrdom is the only possible result of the kind of absolute pacifism you’re describing.

@BeckySharper: As I said- I can see situations in which I would be violent and would feel justified in being so, and self-defence is absolutely, yes, one of those cases. I know I’ll try to stop someone from hurting me if I can.

But I don’t think you can ever reach the minimum possible level of violence in the world if you start with the mindset that violence is sometimes necessary. I don’t believe there’s a good justification for striking someone who is not striking, or atttempting to strike, you or another person (intervening when someone strikes another is, again, something I completely understand).

I understand striking back. I do, I really do, but I believe that it’s only okay to use violence in direct response to violence, and that it should be used as far as possible to defuse and de-escalate the situation. For example, if someone pulled Gadaffi from the car, and he was unarmed, and they shot him- that person did murder Gadaffi, and that was wrong for them to do. If he was armed, if he posed a threat, then these things happen and that’s much more defensible to me. Either way, I will say I’m not sorry he’s dead. He was a tyrant who was strangling his nation and oppressing his own people, and one of the worst examples of corruption in a position of unearned power.

Sorry if my initial comment was combative- I think I reacted pretty hard because my pacifism is important to me, and while I can understand and respect your non-pacifist point of view, you framed your beliefs about violence as absolute truths, which I don’t believe they are. I think they’re your opinion about violence, and that’s totally okay and it was a well-argued position, but I don’t think there are absolute truths about the use of force; I think it’s a complex moral area, and you have what you believe about it, and I have what I believe about it, and while we might hope the other takes our position in time I think it’s okay that we disagree.

@MagpieSeven – You seem to have a relatively narrow view of concepts like “violence” and also “situation”. Killing Gaddafi wasn’t self defense on the part of the individual-qua-individual who did so, because at that point the man was unarmed and seriously injured anyway (so it seems). It was, however, self defense on the part of the individual-qua-Libyan, against whom Gaddafi had been violent for decades. The violent situation that was Gaddafi’s dictatorship was de-escalated using violence.

@baraqiel Right, I think I’ve understood you there- I had to look up “qua”, though, so if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick do correct me. You’re saying that as an individual in the particular situation they were in, the person who shot Gaddafi can’t be considered to be acting in self defence; but in the wider view of Gaddafi’s violent actions against Libya, his shooting is, in the big picture, an act of self defence performed by A Libyan Person against the aggressor toward THe Libyan People, Gaddafi.

That’s a really interesting point of view (also it is so difficult to say that on the internet without it sounding sarcastic- I genuinely find it interesting). It’s a line of thought I’d not considered fully, so I will go away and think on it after replying here.

The only problem I can see with it at present is that there’s always, always an individual’s hand behind every individual act of violence. I believe we should all strive not to perform, personally, acts of violence. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable or impossible thing to ask of ourselves as individuals, and I think if every individual there had not attacked Gaddafi then he’d still be alive, and if justice for the Libyan people demanded his death- and I can totally see the argument that it did/does- then he could be hanged in the light, by the people, instead of murdered after being dragged out of a car.

I think I understand your argument- but I think a Libyan person decided to kill him, as an individual, rather than Libya-as-a-group de-escalating the situation by killing him by acting through a Libyan on the scene. I don’t think violence can be justified by appealing to a higher power.

@MagpieSeven – My only disagreement with you is regarding this statement: “I think a Libyan person decided to kill him, as an individual, rather than Libya-as-a-group de-escalating the situation by killing him by acting through a Libyan on the scene”

The reason I disagree is that the person who killed Gaddafi was a member of the rebellion and the stated goal of the rebellion was to kill Gaddafi (see, for example, the lyrics of this popular rebel song, cf wiki: “Muammar: You have never served the people
Muammar: You’d better give up
Confess. You cannot escape
Our revenge will catch you
As a train roars through a wall
We will drown you.”) In that sense, I don’t see how he *wasn’t* acting as a representative of the Libyan people, or of the rebellion to narrow it a bit. I’m not sure how someone being hanged is more “by the people” — there’s still one hangman pulling the lever of the gallows — given that the death of Gaddafi was something explicitly sought and endorsed by the rebellion at large.

Moreover, it seems from the video record that the event of his death was collective in nature despite the fact that it’s possible to pinpoint a single gunshot wound that killed him. By this I mean both that it’s probable that he would have died from his wounds even without that one shot (in which case it’s much more of a Caesar-style execution) and that in a much more symbolic sense, many people took part his death (again, cf wiki): “Several videos related to the death were broadcast by news channels and circulated via the internet. The first shows footage of Gaddafi alive, his face and shirt bloodied, stumbling and being dragged toward an ambulance by armed men chanting “Allah is great” in Arabic. Another shows Gaddafi, stripped to the waist, suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the head, and in a pool of blood, together with jubilant fighters firing automatic weapons in the air.”

@baraquiel I’ll freely admit I wasn’t aware of the depth of feeling present in so many people that Gaddafi’s death was an absolute necessity. It’s been kind of draining research. As far as I can tell, though, killing Gaddafi was not the goal of the rebellion- it was to free Libya from Gaddafi’s brutal regime, and while killing Gaddafi certainly accomplishes part of that for them, I do not doubt that there were members of the Rebellion that would rather have seen him tried and executed than murdered in the street. While the shooter may have been acting on their understanding of the Rebellion’s wishes, they almost certainly weren’t acting in line with what every single member of the Rebellion wanted. I think this is the problem I have with people performing violent acts on behalf of any large organisation, and I think that’s why I personalise violent acts so strongly.

Okay, as far as the difference between the person acting on their own and the person actin as the hand of the Libyan Rebellion, I think I’ve worked out where my ill feeling comes from. I think maybe the person who shot Gaddafi acted in both those roles. I think in their role as the hand of the Libyan Rebellion, their actions are understandable. But I think that as a person shooting a gun at another person who is not an immediate threat, that their actions are indefensible. It is not a thing that a person should do. I think my disagreement with the original post- and with you- is that we’re weighting their role as the hand of the Rebellion very differently.

As far as the difference between an executioner of the state and a person with a gun who belongs to the rebellion hoping to form a state, the difference to me is that there’s a discussion involved. Before you can get to an executioner, you need to have a trial; before you can have a trial you need a justice system. You need the executioner to be hired or appointed by representatives of the people, and I don’t see the person with the gun as representing the Libyan people in any real way.

I don’t think we can talk in a useful way about the symbolism around a very real person’s death. I think doing so detracts from the fact that he was shot with guns, not executed by the combined will of the Libyan people; even if his death was collective, I’d just be talking about several murderers instead of one.

I’m learning a lot from this conversation, though; thank you so much for talking with me about this. As recorded in my earlier comments, I can get super defensive when talking about pacifism and violence, and I really appreciate that you’re taking the time to discuss things with me instead of dismissing me as naive, or trying to correct my opinion.